Absorbent articles are well known in the art. These articles typically have an absorbent core held or positioned in proximity to the body of a wearer during use in order to capture and absorb bodily exudates discharged from the wearer. Typical absorbent articles include a topsheet facing the wearer, which permits fluid exudates to pass through, and a backsheet, which prevents the exudates from escaping from the absorbent article.
Disposable absorbent articles such as diapers are designed to absorb and contain bodily waste in order to prevent soiling of the body and clothing of the wearer. Disposable diapers typically comprise a single design available in different sizes to fit a variety of wearers ranging from newborns to toddlers undergoing toilet training. The design of the diaper typically affects performance, such as the ability to absorb and contain bodily waste. The fit of the diaper on the wearer's body is typically affected by, for example, the size of the diaper waist opening, the size of the openings around the thighs, and the length or “pitch” of the diaper.
The toilet training stage may be referred to as the “point of exit” from the diaper product category because toddlers who have successfully completed toilet training typically no longer wear diapers. The age at which children are toilet trained in “developed” countries has increased steadily over the past several decades and is now in the range of about 24-48 months. One reason for which toilet training has become delayed is that significant technical improvements have been made in diaper dryness and comfort. For example, when wearing a typical modern diaper, the child may have dry skin even after one or more occurrences of urination. As a result, the child may feel little or no discomfort and often may not even be aware that he or she has urinated.
Many parents have the child wear cotton training pants or cotton underwear during urinary toilet training so the child feels discomfort following urination in his or her “pants”. It is believed that such discomfort assists with learning or provides motivation to learn to voluntarily retain urine. Cotton training pants leave the skin wet and, due to their high breathability, promote evaporative cooling of the skin, further enhancing discomfort. The current tradeoff in this approach, however, is that cotton training pants have poor urine containment, leading to wet clothing and often times, wet surroundings, e.g., carpeting, furniture, etc. Clearly, there is a need to provide a training signal to the child undergoing urinary toilet training while preventing urine leakage and unnecessary changes of clothing.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide an article that can facilitate urinary toilet training by enhancing a wearer's awareness that urination has occurred while at the same time providing the protection of an absorbent article to prevent soiling of the wearer's clothing and surroundings. Particularly, it would be desirable to provide such an article in a form that also provides an effective signal of urination by ensuring that the wearer feels an uncomfortable wetness sensation resulting from urination. In addition, it would be desirable to visibly highlight the presence in the article of the feature that provides this wetness sensation to facilitate an opportunity for urinary toilet training.